Hands On with the Samsung Gravity 3, Gravity T, and Um, :)

T-Mobile and Samsung just launched three messaging slider phones. Two of them are new Gravity handsetsthe $50 Gravity 3 and the $75 Gravity Twhile the third is named after an emoticon. We had a chance to spend some time looking at the three phones at Pepcom's Holiday Spectacular event in New York City.

Both Gravity phones are pretty similar, save for the obvious differences in form factor. The Samsung Gravity 3 is a roomy, horizontal slider with dual keyboards. It measures 4.6 by 2.1 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.3 ounces. The largish LCD features 240-by-320-pixel resolution; it's looking more and more like 176-by-220-pixel LCDs are becoming a thing of the past, even on low-end devices.

The Gravity 3's numeric keypad made dialing numbers simple, thanks to its generously sized, rectangular keys. The QWERTY keyboard features flat, oval-shaped plastic nubs that make for comfortable typing. The keyboard is a little wide, but that's true of any handset with this form factor. You can get it in grey with blue QWERTY keys, or white with neon green keys. The 184MHz processor seemed sufficient for responsive performance, at least from a few minutes of testing, and there's 70MB of internal memory for ringtones, games, and other apps. The Gravity 3 is basically a Samsung Restore, except for T-Mobile instead of Sprint; overall, that's a good thing.

Samsung already has the plastic resistive touch screen thing down pat, as was evidenced by the Seek and the Reality, among others. The vertical slider Gravity T continues this trend, with a surprisingly accurate, responsive 2.8-inch panel with 240-by-320-pixel resolution. To make room for the panel, the Gravity T loses the extra numeric keypad; that's fine, since you can dial numbers on the touch screen.

The slightly shorter overall length means that the slide-out QWERTY keyboard is a little thinner than the one in the Gravity 3. That was actually an improvement as far as I was concerned, but your mileage may vary. Spec-wise, the T measures 4.3 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.2 ounces, a hair less than the Gravity 3. It also features the same 184MHz processor, except with 50MB of internal memory instead of 70MB.

The $20 Samsung :) (yep, that's a smiley) is a vertical QWERTY slider. This one measures 3.9 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs four ounces flat. The four-row keyboard is curvedkind of like a smiley faceand felt reasonably responsive, with a fairly pronounced click. It's more cramped than the other two, though. This is a lower-end device; it steps to a 1.3-megapixel camera, but still includes much of the same software, and the LCD still sports 240-by-320-pixel resolution. Since it doesn't include a touch screen, you'll find six function buttons crammed underneath the LCD, compared to just three with the Gravity T. The same CPU and 50MB of internal memory are built into this device as well.

On the software side, all three have T-Mobile's WAP browser, with one-click access to some favorites from the home page. All three also feature "T-Mobile Social Buzz," which is a basic aggregator for Facebook, Twitter, and some other sites. It can sit in the background and poll the sites for updates, delivering pop-ups whenever a new one appears. Keep a charger handy if you're going to take advantage of that feature, as background polling apps drain batteries fast.

Despite the obvious dramatic differences in color and screen size, these are pretty similar devices. All three are made of high-impact plastic. The texture is something between a full gloss and a matte design; there's some shine to it, but not so much that you see fingerprints all over the phone after a few minutes.

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At this point, Samsung and T-Mobile are smart enough to realize that for more than half of consumersand several studies have backed this upcolor and form factor play a bigger role in phone purchases than any other characteristics. Taken together, these three phones ensure that there will be something for everyone. And now that AT&T and Verizon are charging ridiculous amounts of money for monthly feature phone plans these days, T-Mobile is looking like a better and better option for frequent texters who don't need a smartphone.

All three phones are now available in T-Mobile retail stores and online. Stay tuned for full reviews.

Jamie Lendino is the managing editor of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor In Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Prior to PCMag, he was a contributing editor for Laptop and mediabistro.com. His writing has also appeared in the print editions of Popular Science, Electronic Musician, and Sound and...
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